BZZORT!!!
Miles waved his hands to clear the smoke in front of his face. There was the smell of hot metal, the taste of something electric in the air.
Carl adjusted his glasses and stared at the screen.
“Hm…” said Carl.
“Did it work?” Emily’s muffled voice came from somewhere. “It’s dark. I definitely felt something.”
“Can I open it?” asked Miles, but he was already doing that. The intake chamber was empty, except for more of the metallic-scented smoke that was still lingering in the air. The intake was actually a converted refrigerator from craigslist, jerry-rigged with a Dodgon Converter and Ion Flipper.
“Intake is empty,” said Miles. “And the output…”
Miles followed the twist of copper and steel cables that led over to a much smaller box on the other side of the room. The output box had started out life as a microwave, but thanks to the platinum-lined Recombiner, it could do much more than heat up soup.
“Wait,” said Carl. “It didn’t …”
“I’m opening it,” said Miles.
He pulled open the door on the output.
Emily blinked in the light.
Miles just kind of stared.
“So…” she said. “I guess something’s wrong.”
“What makes you say that,” said Miles, smiling a bit.
“That look. Also I can’t move. Also I’m not tiny.”
“You’re smaller. That’s something.”
“Carl! What happened to my body?!”
“Well, for starters, let’s get you out of there.”
Miles lifted Emily up and tucked her under his arm.
“That’s interesting…” said Carl, looking at something on the screen.
“What is? You were trying to shrink me!”
“Well, we sort of did,” said Carl. “Just not in the way that we thought.”
“I’m just a head!”
“Yes, it’s very … the condenser didn’t engage at the right level. Or something. It condensed your body just fine, in fact it condensed it so thoroughly that it’s gone.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Um… I’ll have to find the source of the glitch. It’s probably a driver software issue, or an incorrect value somewhere.”
“No, what are you saying about my body? It’s gone! I can see that it’s gone. So where’d it go?”
“Well, it might reverse if we ran you back through the other way.”
“Might? I don’t like might.”
“I don’t know!” said Carl defensively. “This is an experiment!”
“Maybe we should all just settle down,” said Miles. “I mean, it is a very interesting result.”
Emily tried to blow a stray hair out of her face.
“Yea, yea. Very interesting my ass. Which I don’t have anymore.”
“Look Em. We can run you back through if you want. Obviously the machine didn’t quite work as planned though…”
“So what are you saying?”
“That we have a bug somewhere. It should only be on the shrinking side, the other way ought to work. Probably.”
“Well. Okay. Let’s do it. You had me really excited to get shrunk down. And while being a living paperweight is another fun challenge, I kind of do like having legs and arms and a body and stuff.”
“Carl can we run her back through?”
“Um… Sure. Let me just power everything back up.”
Carl charged up the coil while Miles placed Emily back in the ‘output’ box. Another couple seconds went by until the machine made another loud BBZZZOOORT and the room filled with smoke again.
“Are we ventilated in here?” Miles wondered aloud.
“Not really,” said Carl. “But at least there are no errors going the other way.”
“That’s a relief,” said Miles, opening the door of the fridge.
“Oh yea, a huge relief,” said Emily. She stuck out her tongue.
Miles just stared again for a couple seconds. Then he started laughing. He was soon joined by Carl.
“Oh great job guys! I’m totally restored!”
“Sorry—“ said Miles. “Although to be honest, it did um… work as intended.”
“Yea, but instead of giving me my body back, now I’m just a giant head.”
“Well. Yea. But that’s sort of what should’ve happened.”
“Sort of. Well, congrats. It works. You two are geniuses.”
“Look,” said Carl. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Do you us to run you through again?” offered Miles. “Maybe get you back to a normal hat size?”
“What? No. Look, only my head made it through the first time. And if the error happens again, I’ll be what? A giant nose? No, you two sort this out, in the meantime I’ll just go home and … do whatever giant heads do.”
“You do that,” said Miles. “Carl help me pick her up.”
#
Emily had to admit being a giant head was more fun than she thought. Mostly just for the reactions of her roommate and best friend Jessica.
“You let our neighbors do what??”
“Well, it was supposed to shrink me.”
“I can see that it totally worked.”
“No, well, first my body disappeared. Then they tried to restore me and this happened.”
“You’re crazy for letting them try this on you.”
“Whatever! It’s fun.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Oh c’mon, you’ve had some fun with their inventions too.”
“Okay, yea. I thought the robotic arms they made were pretty cool.”
“And the time they turned you into a fish!”
“Except I’d asked to become a mermaid for a pool party!”
“Well, you said you still liked being a fish.”
“I … that’s not the point. The point is, they don’t know what they’re doing. And then stuff like this happens.”
“But they’ve always figured it out! And besides, it’s not like there’s a mad science manual out there.”
“I just think they should have to test it on each other.”
“Um, where’s the fun in that?”
“You’re just crazy.”
“Fine. Hey can you roll me outside? It’s a nice day out.”
#
Early in the evening, Miles came over to find Emily snoozing in the backyard.
“Oh hey there,” she said.
“I brought you a sandwich,” said Miles.
“Thanks! Just put it on my tongue.”
She chewed and swallowed the sandwich in one bite.
“Can you also pour another beer in my mouth?”
“Um… Sure. Where is this stuff going anyway?”
“I don’t know! Why would you ask me that question?”
“Just wondering out loud,” said Miles. “So we have some good news.”
“Great! You can put me back and shrink me like you promised?”
“Um… no. But we found the source of the error.”
“Oh, so you can make my head regular sized again?”
“No, we just found the source. We know it’s one of the variables in the condenser’s driver library.”
“What does that mean?”
“Um…”
“So what you’re saying is, I’m stuck this way.”
“For the time being. But, I brought over something else,” said Miles, reaching into his backpack. “It might … they might help you out.”
“Are those those old robot arms that you tried on Jessica?”
“Yes they are. So you could at least, y’know, move a little.”
Miles produced two aluminum-plated mechanical arms, roughly the length of human arms, but with hooks in place of hands.
“Well, that’s something. Where can we put them?”
“Wherever really.”
“What about — how about right under my ears.”
“Sure,” said Miles, “It’ll just take a couple minutes.”
Miles went about hooking up the arms.
“So I’m sorry if I came off as … angry.”
“I didn’t think you were angry,” said Miles.
“No, but I mean… I like being your test subject. I like it a lot. Even when things don’t go according to plan.”
“Well, they seldom do, do they?”
“Yea, but that’s kind of … makes it more interesting! I mean, I actually think this is pretty neat. Even though I wanted to be really tiny.”
“And why were you so excited about that anyway?”
“Because … I don’t know? I’ve always thought it would be funny. Ever since I saw Honey I Shrunk the Kids when I was little.”
“That’s kind of why I thought it’d be fun too,” said Miles. “But how small did you want to be?”
“I mean… I’m not picky about it or anything. Being a head was also kinda fun. I mean, I’m still just a head, but now I’m like… monster-head or something.”
“Monster-head the unstoppable! As soon as I turn these on at least.”
“Nice! Are they ready?”
“Yea, just one more thing…”
“What’s that.”
“Well, we need a neural link somewhere. And when we replaced Jessica’s arms with these, we just used her spine. Only you don’t have one of those. So… I need to get this antennae into your brain.”
“Hm… How to get into my brain… You could go in my ear?”
“I don’t think… wait. I’ll get the phase adjustor.”
“Or take out my eyeball!”
“I’ll just … get the phase adjustor.”
Miles came back a few minutes later with the device he’d mentioned. It was one of Carl’s and his first inventions, mounted on a tripod with a duck-taped extension cord trailing.
Jessica was in the back yard when he got there.
“What’s this about taking out Emily’s eyeball?”
“It’s gotta come out,” said Emily. “That’s what he said!”
“That’s not … no. That’s not necessary.”
“Is she just crazy then?” said Jessica. “Is that the official word here?”
“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” said Miles. “We just need to get inside her brain and install a link for the arms…”
“Which means that Jessica needs to take out my eye. C’mon, make her do it!”
“I … don’t even think that’s going to work.”
“Dang,” said Emily. “Maybe you can use the phase thingy on Jessica to take her eyes out.”
“Hey!” said Jessica, giggling. “Leave me out of your weird fantasies.”
“Isn’t that what that phase thing did? Last time?”
“We did use it for that the one time you wanted to change your eye color, yes.”
“I knew it!”
“But all this does is open a sort of ‘portal’ through something. So we just set it to cut a hatch in the back of your head.”
“Got it. Well, do your thing.”
Miles aimed the phase adjustor at the back of Emily’s head, flipped on the targeting mechanism and got to work. A couple minutes later, it seemed like everything was ready.
“So is there any way this might go wrong?” said Jessica. “I mean, just like everything else you’ve done today?”
“Most of the work on the condenser was Carl’s,” said Miles. “But sure, there’s lots of things that could go wrong.”
“You’re not being very reassuring,” said Jessica.
“Relax,” said Miles. “I know what I’m doing.”
Jessica just raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Sort of,” said Miles, pressing the trigger.
The phase adjustor shot a beam of blue light onto the selected area, which began to glow. A moment later there was a bright flash of the same color along with a low humming noise.
“Is that supposed to happen?” asked Jessica.
“Yea, it looks good,” said Miles, examining the portal. He set the antennae inside and nodded. “Emily, try and—“
Emily was already flexing her mechanical arms.
“Cool!” she said, waving one in front of her face. They were just long enough that she could reach her nose.
“All right,” said Miles, powering down the phase adjustor. “About time something went right today.”
Jessica just shook her head.
“Oh c’mon,” said Miles. “Admit it.”
“I just …”
“Is this still about the mermaid thing?” said Miles.
“No, it’s just… I don’t know. Nevermind.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s stupid. I’m being… Nevermind.”
“Clearly there’s an issue and if you don’t bring it up it wont get fixed,” said Miles, unplugging the cord and gathering it up. Emily was already scooting herself inside.
“You always ask Emily to be your test subject.”
“Because she likes to be.”
“I know! But I … I kinda want to try it sometimes too. I just … I don’t know, it’s stupid. I guess it’s like, I want to do it, but I’m more worried about what people will think. Versus Emily, she clearly doesn’t care. And I don’t want to give you guys the impression that I don’t think you’re good at this stuff, but I just…”
“Look. It’s fine. If you want to come over and help us test things out, you can do that. But I mean, there are risks, right? Right now we’re trying to get this worked out so we can put her back to normal, at least, that’s the theory. But if you want to try out something, whatever that is, I’ll let you know.”
“There is something I… No I’ll tell you later.”
“Sure.”